things your father never told you
by hyacinthian
Summary: "You think parents mess you up more if they're around?" BarneyRobin.


A/N: Post Legendaddy.

* * *

><p>Father's Day goes down like this:<p>

Marshall and Lily head back to Minnesota, Ted goes to Connecticut, and Barney and Robin spend the day with each other.

"It wouldn't feel right," she says, over an early drink and sandwich at the bar. "Calling him."

Barney doesn't say anything. He doesn't tell her about the twelve missed calls from his dad, about the voicemails that he has deleted the minute the icon has popped up on his phone. He's about two steps away from blocking his calls, but even though he can't bring himself to talk to the man, cutting him off completely feels like too much of a severed connection.

(And his mother says, _you ought to give him a chance, Barney_.

As if the decades could be so easily undone with one drink together and a single conversation, a single apology.)

Robin taps out a rhythm on the table, a nervous beat and he wonders if she's itching for a cigarette, even though they've all "quit."

"Maybe," Robin says, with a nervous laugh, "we should just ... get drunk and say fuck it. I mean, tons of people forget their parents on these days anyway, so – so what's the difference, right?"

He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt to the elbow. "Not a Father's Day," he mumbles.

Robin drains her tumbler of scotch, the ice clinking against her teeth. In the low light of the bar, he can still catch the hint of a flush on her cheeks. She sits up straighter, her elbow sliding to rest on the back of her chair. "You know," she says, with a sweep of the arm, "they're supposed to teach us all these life lessons or something. And they're just – "

Barney grins, smiling as wide as he can, feeling the slight pinch in his cheeks. She offers a smile in response. "Paintball?"

She raises an eyebrow. "Shooting range?"

He shrugs. "Same thing, though, isn't it?"

"Mine's louder."

Barney waves for the check.

Robin stands, shaking her head. "Just tell Carl to put it on the tab for Monday."

"Really?"

"Father's Day, Barney. Got to live a little."

He drains the rest of his drink. "When you're right, you're right."

* * *

><p>They spend half the day at the shooting range – the one in Brooklyn that she likes – and she pretends that her shooting isn't leaps and bounds beyond his. The paper targets speak for themselves.<p>

He won't admit it either but the loud cracking sound of the gun and the way it sounds tearing through the paper – it's satisfying, to say the least.

They sit outside for a few minutes, watching people filter in and out of the laundromat across the street. He buys them some Mexican Cokes from a bodega two blocks down and some Slim Jims.

"What is this?" she says, biting into it.

"Cheap not-really-beef jerky."

She shrugs, and eats the rest, marveling at the little smudges of brown grease still in the plastic wrapper. He stuffs the wrappers into her empty soda can.

"I feel bad for Marshall," she says, standing and brushing her jeans off.

"Yeah," he says. "Must be hard."

She hums something indiscriminate and starts heading towards the train station. "You still remember the subway, don't you?"

"Shut up. I've been a New Yorker longer than you've been alive."

She laughs. "No, you haven't!"

"Well, it's close."

"Only if you're bad at math."

The car's maybe half-full, so they sit together. She looks out the window. He counts the stops off in his head.

* * *

><p>She goes to have dinner in Chelsea with one of her girlfriends ("Girlfriend, Scherbatsky? Seriously?") and he spends dinner in MacLaren's, picking at a burger that Wendy brings by on the house to offset all the liquor.<p>

He calls James when he's between sleepy drunkenness and a jittery slurring excitement.

"You really need to stop drunk dialing me."

"This isn't a drunk dial," Barney says. "Not – not really."

"That's good," James laughs. "What is it then?"

"Happy Father's Day."

James sighs. "Barney, is this why – "

"Aren't you mad? Don't you ever just get _mad_?"

"At Mom?"

"No, not at Mom! At – at – forget it. Sorry I called you." He hangs up before he hears James' reply.

He sits outside, on the stoop of the bar, chain-smoking. Robin shows up forty-five minutes later, her keys in her hand. "You should come up."

He looks at her. "You should get drunker."

She sits on the stoop next to him.

"You think if Jerome had stuck around, he'd have taught me all those sitcom life lessons? Like how to talk to a girl, how to drink a shot, stupid shit like that?"

She snakes her hand into his jacket pocket, fishes out his flask of whiskey.

"Oh, you're good."

"I've known you too long."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't think he could have taught you anything you didn't learn later anyway."

"Is that really your answer? Or just wishful thinking?"

She unscrews the cap of the flask, takes a long drink. "Wishful thinking, I guess. You don't want to think the assholes could have made you better."

"You think your dad could have made you better?"

She shrugs. Laughing, she adds, "Well, he couldn't have made me _worse_, could he?"

"Yeah," Barney says. "I definitely think you need to get drunker."

He buys her a few shots at the bar. Wendy shakes her head from behind the counter.

They toast to the assholes. ("I think that's a Kanye song," Robin says.)

* * *

><p>Later, back at her apartment, they split one of her bottles of red and whatever's left of his pack of cigarettes. She scrounges for some aluminum foil to use as an impromptu ashtray.<p>

"I called him," she says, flicking the ash off one of her cigarettes.

"Bad idea?"

The edge in her voice is hard when she laughs, "Yeah, not my greatest." She pours herself some more wine. "I tried to join the hockey team for him when I was a kid, you know. The local one?"

"Yeah?"

"They told me I was too scrawny to play and he didn't look at me for a week." She raises her glass in toast and drains half of it. "And once I went on tour, that was that."

He feels it all bubbling underneath the surface, all of the things that he hasn't been able to voice or think or say that alcohol seems to have dredged up. Instead, he gives a shaky exhale and takes a long sip of wine. "Dads should be there, you know?"

"Yeah. They should." She tops off their glasses. "This sucks."

"They shouldn't really get a holiday, should they?"

"I guess everyone's dads mess them up."

"You think they mess you up more if they're around?"

She shrugs and rolls over on the sofa as he stubs his cigarette out against the foil. She nudges the remote and the TV switches on.

A late-night rerun of The Price is Right. The new ones with Drew Carey.

Barney laughs so hard, his stomach hurts. (Robin doesn't see the humor in the situation.)

* * *

><p>Ted calls from Connecticut at ten the next morning during the middle of French brunch at his parents'. Robin and Barney are splayed out on the living room floor with a mess of Chinese takeout boxes, still a little drunk.<p>

Barney scrabbles his hand along the floor for the phone. "'lo?"

"Barney?" Ted calls, loudly.

"Shh, shh," Barney hisses. "What do you want?"

"Did you and Robin _sleep together_?"

"No. I just got ... pretty drunk. Really drunk. What do you want?"

"I need you to pretend to talk to me so that I don't have to listen to my mom and her boyfriend talk about their experiences with tantric sex."

"Bye, Ted."

"No, no, wait – "

Robin wakes then with a soft groan, looking around the room with narrowed eyes. "Where – oh, we're in my apartment. Good."

"Breakfast?"

"Greasy food."

"Of course."

They head to a diner in Midtown and he drowns his sorrows and hangover in about a gallon of maple syrup. She doesn't even bother to hide her grimace.

"You're Canadian. Aren't you supposed to, like, drink the stuff?"

"Yeah, that's not real maple, my friend. You're drinking bootleg maple."

"Bootleg maple?"

Robin makes a show of smelling it and holding her nose. "Yeah, I can smell a fake from a mile away."

He chuckles.

* * *

><p>The night Marshall and Lily get back from Minnesota, they treat them to a round of beers. Marshall still doesn't seem like his old self, but he's making more of an effort, trying to smile more often. Lily holds his hand under the table.<p>

"Your dad would have been proud of you, Marshall," Robin says.

Marshall smiles. "Thanks, Robin."

"And when you're a dad," Barney says, "you'll be an awesome dad."

Robin awkwardly taps his wrist with her hand. He leaves to buy the next round. Ted looks uncomfortably around the table.

* * *

><p>They're still not really fixed, him and Robin. He knows that.<p>

The relationship was a mistake. Too many people pushing them into something neither of them were really ready for. And honestly, he isn't even sure if they both wanted it or just thought that they wanted it.

Since Jerome decided to show up and be a _thing_– no other way to classify it – in his life, everything seems to have some sort of greater context. It all feels too fake for him to deal with, but too important to ignore. And things like this – things like Robin – when Jerome says things like, "You'll never find anyone who's like Robin," and "Maybe you guys should get back together," how is he supposed to read that? It's a man who has never spent more than a week's worth of time with him, who decided to leave during the most important years, and he is just supposed to trust his word?

Jerome doesn't _fit_in Barney's life. Not really. No matter how hard either of them try to make him fit.

Barney's already had a life's worth of shaping experiences and influential people and Jerome wasn't there to be part of it. And for him to step in now, now that he's settled in the suburbs with another family and another son (a better son), isn't it easy for him to step in like Obi-Wan and give advice or be a mentor or whatever he wants to be?

James and his mom are still always like, _give him a chance, give him a chance._

Barney's the kind of person unwilling to forgive and unwilling to forget; it's what makes him so perfect for corporate business.

Jerome stops by his GNB office when he steps out for lunch, and Barney tries to just avoid him, to sit quietly, stoically in his seat.

"I know that you didn't want me around for Father's Day, but I thought – "

"You want me to forgive you," he says, quietly, "and I'm not ready to do that."

"But just for right now?"

"I don't know. You – you _left_. You don't get to come back and act like it's okay. That's not your decision."

Jerome rubs at his jaw with his hand. "Barney."

"I'm not – I'm not saying I'm cutting you out of my life. You're – we can still have coffee and hang out sometimes, but you can't just jump into being my dad. That's not how it works."

"So how does it work?"

"You have to be patient. And we ... make it up as we go along. I don't – I don't hate you."

"That's a start."

"I have a meeting."

* * *

><p>He meets Robin for happy hour, talking vaguely about Jerome's visit at GNB. She sets a pack of cigarettes on the table, slides them over towards him. "To make up for my smoking up all your cigarettes."<p>

"You know it wasn't you that did all the smoking, right? Or the drinking?"

She smiles. "Felt like I owed it to you."

He looks up at her. "We're okay, right?"

She sets her hand on top of his. "Yeah, we're okay."

"Next year, Father's Day, want to do this again?"

"I'll bring the tequila."

"Sounds like a plan."

She lifts her glass of wine in toast. "Here's to bad dads."

"Happy belated Father's Day," he replies.

They toast.


End file.
